The subject disclosure generally relates to controlling availability of the user for communication, and, in particular, to providing for selective availability of a user.
Various messaging services provide means for users to set a status while online, indicating the availability of the user to engage in a conversation. The status may be set as available, busy, idle, or a customized status created by the user (e.g., working, in a meeting). Additionally, a user may choose to be invisible, where even though the user is online, the user will appear as offline to contacts on his/her contact list.
However, despite the selected status, the user may get messages from contacts when the user has indicated that he/she is busy, or even set as invisible. This is inconvenient where the user would like to communicate with a selected number of contacts on the messaging service.
Thus, it may be desirable to provide the user with a more effective way of controlling his or her availability to be contacted by contacts over a messaging service.